Variety In Life

Suppression Orders - Do They Need Suppressing?

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2009-07-04T05:01:59Z

An Adelaide judge has suppressed details of a self-confessed drug mule's sentence, along with his reasons for doing so.

Read the full story at AdelaideNow

The female offender collected a bag containing $500,000 worth of cocaine and the drug ice from an airport carousel. Her two co-accused have pleaded not guilty.

It is impossible to see how such iron-curtain secrecy can ultimately benefit the public.

Judges have made clear their belief that lighter sentences combined with rehabilitation programs work better in avoiding recidivism. They have stated that protecting some individuals from public scrutiny and resultant destructive backlash from a community that lacks empathy and understanding is essential in assisting their return to the straight path.

That is all very well, but when the cat's away the mice can play.

How can the public monitor the performance of judges and the court system if an increasing proportion of their operations are veiled in high secrecy? Are we to trust that the esteemed lords of the bench are capable only of delivering ultimate results? According to whose values will these outcomes be measured as nearing perfection? We are reassured only with statistics, but statistics lie!

No-one but themselves and other like-minded professions can gain access to most of the source information that those statistics are based upon. This particular suppression and similar examples further extend the blindfold.

It may well be that this offender is a victim of circumstance. We have no way of knowing if her sentence was light as it's a secret, but it is hard to imagine a need for suppression if His Honour had come down hard upon her offending.

We have strong reasons for rejecting this judge's behaviour. Simply put, it can have an impact far beyond the scope of just this one trial.

It's clear that each time a judge finds favourably for an offender involved in such serious criminal activity as trafficking hard drugs he or she sends a message to the community that is open to misinterpretation by irresponsible characters who may read it as a green light to continue their crimes.

Furthermore, 'precedant' is a byword of legality. Judges themselves well know that precedents in judgments must be set with extreme care as they can translate into unintended outcomes when applied to similar cases.

Surely, the same principle applies to suppressions. They could lead to an invisible creeping rot.

The community is ultimately concerned about safety, particularly of it's younger members who are the ones most vulnerable to drug activity. Precedents of suppression that progressively shut down public awareness of criminal trial outcomes set alarm bells ringing loudly regardless of what highly educated judges may think.

Our society is democratic. Democracies have disadvantages. Operations in secrecy can certainly overcome some of them by eliminating vexatious and unenlightened meddling. However, the cost is usually found to be horrendous once it becomes known. That's never until the public's ability to regain control has been decimated. That cost is nearly always a self-serving dictatorship.

A Lawyer With A Handout

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2009-03-20T01:11:56Z

A law lecturer and former National Party officer wants to challenge the Rudd government's economic stimulus payment in the Australian High Court on the grounds that it's unconstitutional. For what?

There is zero reason why the practical issues facing us today ought to be a function of elusive, curly arguments and the super-fine splitting of legal hairs.

This is mere gamesmanship. It's likely motives are either ego-strutting or political aims. Whether or not the handout is unconstitutional will be a matter of opinion, anyway. Why should we give the ghost of a damn what some legally-obsessed minds think?

It's a fair bet that the arguments on each side will be so nearly equal that only the most minutely discerning legal brains could pick a difference. We need to give those legal brains a pink slip. DCM!

Why should a judge's opinion of the translation of current life issues into the bygone word-meanings of a bygone era be a decider of whether or not the federal government can make such a payout?

The legal intellectual giants maintain a stance that their acutely insightful interpretations of the wording of statutes ought to govern every single action humans undertake. Little wonder! That's what keeps them employed at a premium.

It doesn't take acute insight on the part of a layperson to realise that the further legal decisions become removed from plain, ordinary common sense the richer the legal profession gets.

To Hell with High Court opinions. This is our country. Our lives and our livelihoods are at stake. The law cannot decide whether the stimulus is fiscally right or wrong. It should keep it's nose out of what doesn't concern it.

What do you suppose will happen if the US government bail-out of financial institutions is declared unconstitutional and is scuttled?

We would be rapidly brought face-to-face with the extreme folly of allowing the law to be the master instead of the slave!

This sh*#-stirrer has his own hand out for something. We should do to it what school Headmasters formerly did to the hands of disobedient children!

But then, he might sue!

Alcopop Tax Bubble Burst

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2009-03-19T21:51:51Z

Some heated discussion has arisen over the defeat of the Rudd Government’s alcopop tax. Many people viewed it cynically as a mere tax-grab.

I believe that alcopops, like poker machines, are the product of highly insightful marketing technology. They result in young drinkers losing sight of both the overall amount of alcohol consumed and the total amount of money spent on them.

It's fair to argue that alcopops don't cause binge-drinking. That is a result of many social factors. However, these lolly-water drinks do cleverly capitalise on the binge-drinking tendency of the young and furthermore, they appear to encourage it. Profit–driven marketing has always worked like that. It also gets ever more wily and ingenious at subliminal exploitation.

Defenders of these designer drinks have pointed out that in response to the tax young people are now buying spirits and mixing their own alcopops, making them even stronger.

That is not necessarily a negative step. It is exactly what older generations did for decades before these drinks were created. We at least knew how drunk we were getting. Today's night-clubbers and party-goers don’t seem to.

Mr Rudd's tax strategy may or may not have been the best move, but at least it was aimed at a sensible outcome. It sought to undermine a socially questionable new development in an area where direct government intervention and control wasn't an option.

What should he have done? There are many alternative suggestions, but most of them have a personal motive or private agenda lurking somewhere behind them.

Even if mere revenue–raising had been the government's true goal, it ought to be remembered that the looming general revenue cost of binge drinking through the provision of physical and mental health services and facilities will almost certainly be way in excess of what this tax would have netted.

The Knives Are In

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-11-14T05:26:38Z

Have Rocket, will travel. Have wings, will fly. Have knives, will stab and potentially kill.

The stabbing death of a school-child in central Adelaide on a weekday afternoon comes as no surprise. Many schoolchildren carry knives nowadays.

This is supposedly for safety, but there is no bigger pile of rubbish than that claim. An adolescent child, particularly a male, who is armed with a knife is far more likely to carry it in order to feel brave rather than to feel safe.

Young 'braves' have an alarming tendency to wind up in combat. That fact hasn't changed in many thousands of years.

Curiously, this trend has occurred during the age of academic social solutions. This, we are told, is an era of social improvement through scientific methods rather than age-old rules of thumb.
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A Moral Lesson For Society

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-09-10T18:28:42Z

Reading here, teachers in South Australia complain that they are fed up with having to teach morals and manners to the children of lazy parents who fail to do so themselves. Teachers insist that this is not their job.

In the past, teachers did teach morals and manners to children. So did parents and the rest of society in a three-pronged attack.

The empowerment of children commencing in the 1970s now shields them behind such an enormously hypersensitive protective sympathy that parents find themselves walking a tightrope between effective discipline and child abuse.

There is little wonder that parents often give up and stay well clear of dangerous territory. As for the 'rest of society', people know perfectly well that if they are caught disciplining another parent's child for any reason whatsoever the police are likely to descend upon them like Valkyries with dangerous criminal and civil actions looming.

While the teachers are to be sympathised with for their plight, simply thrusting the onus back onto parents is misguided and represents a futile game of Handball. The underlying problem must be corrected before anything will change.

Cabbies Hit Back

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-05-19T20:06:22Z

Taxi drivers are striking because another cabbie was bashed in Adelaide yesterday. Good on them!

It is clear that a lot of people are cynical about taxi drivers. However, that only serves to increase the amount of violence against them, since among sub-cultures of the unrefined and destructive it is considered less of an offence to bash a member of a group who are generally 'on the nose'.

That in turn will make it impossible to get more responsible individuals to become cabbies. The public cannot win from that sort of vicious circle.

Violent crimes have got out of control. They are all too often committed by people with long histories of similar offences who are released on the ridiculous notion that if they are gradually bashing people less often then their rehabilitation program is working. It's called 'growing out of offending'.

Everyone in society needs protecting against these rat-bags, not just cabbies.

Interesting Old Books: Taras Bulba By Nikolai Gogol (1835)

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-04-07T06:39:05Z

Reading a book like Taras Bulba today is like taking a wild roller-coaster ride back through a time when roller-coasters didn't exist, but the ride of life was every bit as hair-raising and far more dangerous.

This story is an elegantly flamboyant tale of legendary heroic deeds done by legendary fighting Cossacks for whom death in battle was the only honourable death. These were men who would die willingly alongside a wounded comrade in a vain attempt to save his life, but also men who would slaughter women and children along with men and priests who offended their haughty pride in themselves or their orthodox faith.

Gogol brought his sixteenth century characters to life so vividly that you can almost visualise the arrogant self-worship in their eyes, excited into action by extreme hatred of their enemies. You can almost feel the brave strength and fearless ferocity of these warriors with their sabres and musket-balls flying on the battlefields of the Ukrainian steppes.
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Neighborhood What????

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-04-07T04:23:01Z

I have never believed in Neighborhood Watch programs. I see them as helping to facilitate government cop-outs on crime control.

I can see their worth as an adjunct to effective crime control policies. As a substitute, which is what they have tended to become and were always going to become, they are useless.

This month the St Marys (South Australia) Neighborhood Watch newsletter confirmed that my assessment is spot-on. The front page feature article is a generic spiel about - believe it or not - the wearing of seatbelts in cars! It is a mirror of a current road safety advertising campaign.

What does that have to do with crime control?

Oh, yes! I see the point, alright. Failure to wear seatbelts is a crime because it causes needless deaths. And in response to that I say to the Neighborhood Watch coordinator and the fans of this half-baked club of committee-lovers -" Belt Up!"

Worthwhile though they may be, there are places for road safety articles. Neighborhood Watch newsletters isn't it.

These programs and their periodicals were initially designed to encourage locals to help prevent mainstream crimes by keeping a sharp eye out and reporting anything suspicious.

What we expect to read are articles detailing how local heroes have helped to curb crimes in the area through timely deeds. Where are they? People have largely become cynical because when they have tried to report something to police the response has been somewhat lacklustre.

To make matters worse, the remaining three pages of this rag contain nothing more than generic crime prevention tips and a list of crimes reported in the area last month that is so tiny it couldn't possibly reflect the true picture of local offending.

Here is the final insult - a four page insert crammed full of advertising! Frankly, I found the advertising to be the only worthwhile content in this dismal publication that was stuffed into my letterbox. Since the advertising is clearly paid for and since the newsletter contained no new material, just what exactly is money being raised for?

The guest speaker at their next meeting is from the Adelaide Youth Court. The subject is Juvenile Justice Family Conferencing. That news hints to me what I have long suspected - that Neighborhood Watch programs have become a tool for governments and justice officials to saturate the public mind with their own preferred crime control policies.

Those policies are the ones that work for them. Do they work for us?

Book: Holy Deadlock By A.P. Herbert (1934)

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-03-11T04:58:00Z

This novel has a historical significance transcending the insights into the past that we gain from it. The author first published it in 1934. In 1936, as a member of the British Parliament he introduced a divorce law reform bill which became the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1937. The book was written to highlight the absurdities of existing divorce laws in preparation for reform. It succeeded marvellously.

A.P. Herbert is best know to the world for his Misleading Cases series of books, an hilarious lampooning of the British legal system through fictional court cases. Ten volumes of these were written between 1928 and 1966. They are well worth reading.
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Interesting Old Books: Cat's Cradle By Kurt Vonnegut (1963)

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-02-28T00:08:09Z

Reading this book in the 2000's you gain a different perspective of the author's meanings that the reader of the 1960's would have had. At that time the fear was current in almost everybody's mind that the atomic bomb would soon wipe us out.

By now our thoughts about that have relaxed somewhat, firstly because it hasn't happened, and secondly because we are aware that other threats to humanity's continued existence might well finish us before a nuclear holocaust gets the chance. In that respect, Kurt Vonnegut was a true visionary. He asked the insightful question "What else are the scientists who created the bomb capable of inventing?"
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Book: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (1963)

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-02-06T07:10:48Z

One of the most worthwhile attributes of a good book is it's ability to shock into sudden awakening a dull or incomplete area of our understanding.

In his curiously named book James Baldwin comprehensively annihilated white people's murky, opaque view of the lives lived in Harlem ghettos. In fact, he did it so well that a conscientious white person can't help feeling ashamed of their ignorance while they read.

The title is apparently a verse from slave song "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!"
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Dog Attacks Show Legislators Have False Teeth

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — 2008-01-31T22:38:25Z

If factory owners negligently allowed machines to do to employees the same sorts of injuries that people's dogs do to innocent passers-by the authorities would be trying very hard to put them in jail. But when those injuries are caused by someone's pooch it's somehow different.
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